Greetings!

This is my personal log while scrutinizing the world of observational astronomy and gadgetries. Not intending to be a teaching blog, cause I'm still learning myself, but I hope this will serve some kind of guides, tips and perhaps reminder for myself in the future when I want to return back and exploring the endless configurations and settings.

And most important, I want to re-ignite the passion back into myself, doing things that I love, and simply have fun doing it.

Please feel free to comments and throw in ideas for the rest of us to explore.

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A Picture Perfect Moment!

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While doing a 30 sec exposure of myself in front of the giant 30" Dobsonian telescope, the very bright sporadic meteor appear right on top of the Pleiades! I saw it at the corner of my eye, but since the 30 second exposure was still in progress, I had to keep my excitement to myself until the exposure is finish! I was glad it turned out nicely. I've tried to photograph meteors for several years, and this was actually my very first successful shot!   What else can I say, an upside-down Orion rising, starry nights despite the Moon still up the sky and causing shadows around the observing site, big Dobsonians to view the southern sky and a meteor passing near the Pleiades! .... a picture perfect moment! Oh yeah, this was taken during the Post-Eclipse Star Safari event, organized by 3RF AUstralia, at Coonabarabran, Australia on the weekend of 17-18 Nov 2012.
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Rotating my boring flat Jupiter image into a 3D globe using WinJUPOS and vpython

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Recently, the sky cleared up suddenly over in my place. Which was a rarity in itself. And since Jupiter is high up in the sky passing the meridian just before midnight, I grabbed that opportunity to image it just like any other night. And then, I remember saw Micheal Philips old post about rendering Jupiter into a 3D globe and generate a fly-by video. I think I saw a tutorial somewhere in youtube, but simply couldn't find it. Either it has been removed, or I was just imagining it.. syyyy.. Luckily nowadays we have a new friend, ChatGPT to help with the research. after a lot of wrong prompts and refining the scope, I finally found a way.  So here it is Step - 1 (Summary). Generate the complete processed Jupiter photos as usual, using Autostakkert, Winjupos. I used imppg for sharpening (seems to be working much better than PixInsight! ), and back and forth to PixInsight for color balance and other cosmetic stuffs. Step - 2. (Winjupos) Open back the final TIF in Winjupos. Do Image Mea...
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HEQ5 and Skymap Pro Connection Test

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